The
influence of each sect over its own members is overwhelming, often
shutting out, or controlling, all other influences. We have Popes here,
all the more dangerous because no triple crown puts you on your guard.
* * * In such a land, the Abolitionists early saw, that, for a moral
question like theirs, only two paths lay open: to work through the
Church; that failing, to join battle with it. Some tried long, like
Luther, to be Protestants, and yet not come out of Catholicism; but
their eyes were soon opened. Since then we have been convinced that, to
come out from the Church, to hold her up as the bulwark of slavery, and
to make her shortcomings the main burden of our appeals to the religious
sentiment of the community, was our first duty and best policy. This
course alienated many friends, and was a subject of frequent rebuke from
such men as Dr. Channing. But nothing has ever more strengthened the
cause, or won it more influence; and it has had the healthiest effect on
the Church itself.
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